Benzygier Morant?

I know Prisoner X was only an ex-shmutznik, but this whole affair has certainly brought out the A.D.D. in me. Can't stop thinking about it.
Is Ben Zygier the new Breaker Morant?

Set aside what ever form of treason he purportedly committed. It's really the alleged suicide that's worrying.

In my estimation there's no shortage of disinformation being disseminated about Ben Zygier. Since yesterday the Israeli press has started insinuating disparaging hints as to Zygier's character. But that's a run of the mill, crisis management smokescreen strategy that the Israeli establishment seems to favour, especially against outsiders who won't or can't defend themselves. It may be a rather non Australian form of vulgarity but to a large extent it works on the local populace.

We probably won't know which security offence Zygier was accused of, at least til we've already forgotten all about it, but I find it hard to believe that it's really about abusing his Australian passport and managing a straw company. All this cloak and dagger stuff, being held in  custody for 10 months incognito and a trail behind closed doors for all that? It doesn't quite add up to me. It may be true but it gives me cognitive dissonance.

And speaking of straw companies and questions of guilt and innocence, Zygier is innocent til proven guilty, no less so than Yvette Liberman (in the heavier charges that were dropped). And in Zygier's case there never will be any trial, so he's legally innocent for ever. Find that naïve? Well it's equally naïve in both cases. But I'm digressing.  

As has been amply reported Zygier was held in a special "suicide proof" cell built for Yigal Amir, at the Ayalon Prison. We don't know what equipment and state of the art technology that entails but it does imply full and continuous camera surveillance of that cell.  As for now it appears that contrary to initial reports, he wasn't held for all those months in total isolation, but that he had contact with family and lawyers. In the last day or so the Israeli press has made it sound as if during those months he was being tried in secret, to protect the State and Zygier himself.  But according to high profile lawyer Avigdor Feldman, who met with Zygier two days before he died, the trial had not yet started, though there were moves abound to try and arrive at a plea bargain. But Feldman's impression was that Zygier's inclination was to go to trial to prove his innocence and importantly that Zygier didn't show any apparent signs of a suicidal nature.   

So on the face of it, it looks like Zygier was afforded his legal rights as a defendant, under the particular circumstances. And if Zygier's alleged crime was divulging to ASIO (the intelligence network of a friendly country) the identities of other Australian Mossad operatives abusing their Australian passports and that he managed a straw company which traded in enemy countries, well there doesn't seem to be any real motive for rubbing Zyglier out.

But it's another question whether the extraordinary steps taken in Zygiers instance match up with the reported extent of his supposed transgression. And whatever it is that he did allegedly divulge, it is almost certainly justifiably a secret, for reasons of national security. That is, the charges against him were probably more serious than what we are presently aware of. 

So Zygier supposedly hung himself. Apparently the post mortem from the Abu Kabir forensic laboratory was death by asphyxiation. That doesn't sound too complicated. So why did it take the obligatory Coroner's Inquest something like 2 1/2 years to conclude that it was a suicide? If there was continuous and total camera surveillance in the cell why wasn't there video evidence of his sad demise, which supposedly would have ended the enquiry as soon as it started?

Why does the Coronary Inquest have to remain secret? Why after Zygier's identity has been exposed shouldn't the Coroner's Inquest protocols be made public? Even the most incompetent court would not allow a post mortem enquiry to be mixed up with a trial for treason. So there's no apparent risk of exposing State secrets in a Coroners Inquest. It's also been reported that the Coroner didn't enter into questions of wardens' negligence either. Rightly so. Legally speaking, they are two totally different enquiries. So there's nothing to protect behind closed doors from that angle either.  

So what happened to the camera surveillance? In what way can the existence or disappearance of such evidence undermine State security if the State honoured its democratic civil rights duties? Why not make its existence public? That is unless the State did something improper and by a cover up deemed itself to be acting with impunity.  So far we've had reports quoting a warden making an urgent call for an ambulance because of a suicide attempt. Big deal. More suspect disinformation. He was quite probably at the front desk and had no contact with what was happening in the cell that was built for Yigal Amir. This sort of thing goes nowhere near convincing me that there was a suicide. I contend that without the video evidence, the suicide story seems about as believable as finding a naked man in your bedroom closet claiming he's researching moths.

I suspect that the Australian Government is none too motivated to stir up a hornets nest exposing intelligence network information, especially when there are common interests between the two countries on the same side of the so called war against the Axis of Evil. I'm aware that from an Australian point of view the circumstances surrounding Zygier are somewhat distasteful, but I do hope that the Australian Government will show a bit more backbone in shedding light on the puzzling death of one of its citizens than it did in 1902.